HKBU reportedly bans students from using ChatGPT for assignments

Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU) has become the second university in the city to reportedly stop pupils from using artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGpt in their course work following University of Hong Kong (HKU) 's move to tackle plagiarism issues, according to SCMP.

The report said HKBU sent a letter to all students regarding the ban of artificial intelligence (AI)-based tools on 22 February. In the letter, Albert Chau, HKBU's vice-president of teaching and learning, reminded students that they would possibly commit plagiarism if they adopted words or ideas from ChatGPT and other AI technologies to use them as their own work in their assignments.

Chau said the penalties for plagiarism and other forms of academically dishonest acts were reduced grades, course failure, suspension and even dismissal. Furthermore, he added that the university expected students to uphold academic integrity at all times.

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This comes after HKU's announcement on banning students to use ChatGPT or any other AI-based tool for coursework, assessments or classes, to cope with plagiarism issues.

According to an official announcement on HKU's website, Ian Holliday, VP and pro-vice-chancellor (Teaching and Learning) sent an email to all students saying that the campus would prohibit the use of ChatGPT or any other AI-based tool for all classroom, coursework and assessment tasks at HKU as a short-term policy. Exemptions require written permission from course instructors. Students cannot provide themselves or other students with exemptions.

Suspected violations of this interim policy will be treated as potential plagiarism cases, said Holliday. "At HKU, plagiarism is defined as ‘the use of another person’s work (including but not limited to any materials, creations, ideas and data) as if one’s own without due acknowledgement, whether or not such work has been published and regardless of the intent to deceive’. Making unacknowledged use of ChatGPT or another AI-based tool, treated for these purposes as ‘another person’, falls squarely within this definition," the message read. 

He said the university has also started to consider the implications of AI-based tools for teaching and learning at HKU and plan to launch a broad-based campus debate involving both teachers and students. 

Launched by the Microsoft-backed OpenAI in November last year, ChatGPT is an AI system that can generate human-like text in response to simple keywords put in by users. It seems to be all that educators, marketers, technologists, journalists and writers are talking about as the platform’s scarily human-like ability to produce well-researched content in seconds, and contemplate what it will mean for the future of many writing-based roles and for the people who rely on them.

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